Domain Transition: Moving over paid traffic campaigns first

[dsbud]

We're planning a domain name (rebrand) transition, and considering our options.

We rely heavily on paid traffic. To reduce risk, we’re considering moving AdWords and Bing Ads over campaign-by-campaign to the new domain first, while organic traffic continues to direct to the old domain. Each of our ad groups has a custom, noindex’d landing page. In order to serve paid traffic, we’d at minimum need a front page, and likely a privacy policy page in addition. Here’s a rough outline of what I think a transition like this might look like:

1. Launch new domain with a simple front page, and privacy policy.
2. Move over ppc landing pages on the new domain (noindex'd, robots.txt)
3. Create new ads in existing ad groups directing to the new domain.
4. Monitor ad groups for some time period to verify sustainability.
5. Once we're satisfied with ppc performance, and planned the rest of the organic page migrations, 301 redirect everything to the new domain.

Is there any problems or things we should be concerned about with this approach? I'd think it should be fine, but I've been bitten enough from large-scale redirects in the past, that I know I should be nervous.

[andy.bigbangthemes]

Hey there,

I already posted this a few minutes ago but heck...it's just as helpful I guess. Rand just did a whiteboard Friday video about rel=canonical & redirect 3XX links which is right up your alley here.

I obviously can't explain it better than Rand, so have a look for yourself: https://moz.com/blog/rel-canonical

Cheers

Andy

[dsbud]

Thanks. That video is definitely useful. Mostly stuff I already am aware of, but definitely a good refresher

I'm more concerned if a slow/partial transition of indexed pages to the new domain will have any aggregate negative affect over transitioning everything all at once.

Side note: our ppc landing pages are noindex'd because they're hyper customized for the keyword, and hyper optimized for conversion. They're basically include just a request form... only supporting content is to improve conversion rates. Which is often at odds with a page optimized for organic rankings.

[andy.bigbangthemes]

Hi,

well I think the answer quite shortly put is yes, it would affect the speed at which google would boost the new site as long as you're not uploading the content. If all of these are noindex the impact wouldn't probably be as big. Think of uploading the dofollow doindex content at least. That should be a good start.

[dsbud]

Thanks for the response. What exactly makes you think this strategy would affect the speed at which google indexes the new domain?

[andy.bigbangthemes]

Hey,

I'm thinking about the basic things. First of all - Google won't take you seriously if you just have a couple of pages, which are new to his eyes, and with no links. More content (dofollow) will immediately mean that it sees you're trying to make an impact. + better chances of backlinks, shares. + better traffic since you have more pages. All of these would show Google that you're the real deal.